Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for preventing interference in a wireless communication system.
Related Art
In a wireless local area network (WLAN), there are two kinds of basic service sets (BSSs). A first type of BSS is an independent BSS (IBSS) that is a BSS in an ad-hoc mode, in which stations (STAs) can directly communicate with each other, not via an access point (AP). The IBSS does not allow access to a distribution system (DS). Thus, the IBSS may achieve a self-contained network. A second type of BSS may be an infrastructure BSS. The infrastructure BSS may include an AP and a plurality of STAs, in which the AP may be connected to a DS. Meanwhile, in an overlapping basic service set (OBSS) environment, a plurality of BSSs is present within a certain region and may overlap with each other in an area and overlapping service areas of the BSSs may cause interference between the BSSs.
When there are a large number of BSSs or a small number of frequency channels due to use of broadband of 80 MHz/160 MHz as in TGac, an OBSS may occur. In the OBSS environment, interference between STAs may cause drastic deterioration in performance. To mitigate interference in the OBSS environment, a selection algorithm for BSSs to actively select an available channel or a mechanism for communication between overlapping BSSs may be adopted. Alternatively, a mechanism in which communications between other overlapping BSSs are suspended during communication of a target BSS may be used. In addition, studies are being conducted on a variety of methods for preventing interference occurring between an AP and an STA in the OBSS environment.